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Keywords: Clergy Sexual Abuse

  • RELIGION

    Let’s be less shrill about Church-State relations

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 April 2018
    48 Comments

    Archbishop Fisher's Easter warning was in part responding to the findings of the royal commission and in part to some of the submissions to the Ruddock panel on religious freedom. Being on the panel, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on particular submissions at this time. But I was shocked by the Archbishop's shrill tone.

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  • RELIGION

    Why clericalism matters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 February 2018
    81 Comments

    In the Catholic Church clericalism is the whipping boy of choice. But what it embraces is less clear. It is a pejorative word, used by people of others but never of themselves, and is normally defined by reference to examples of it. It is worth pausing to reflect on clericalism and its significance for church and society.

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  • RELIGION

    A new high water mark for child protection

    • Sheree Limbrick
    • 20 February 2018
    34 Comments

    When the bishops and religious decided to establish CPSL they understood that a new approach was needed. In a Church that will take many years to recover from the child sexual abuse crisis, something different had to happen. The safety and protection of children and vulnerable people in the Church is everybody's business.

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  • RELIGION

    Rebuilding trust must be the priority

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 24 January 2018
    37 Comments

    It's a common refrain from survivors of clerical sexual abuse, often heard when church leaders try to explain away their failure to listen and respond to the crimes of their peers: 'They just don't get it.' Up until recently, Pope Francis has seemed to 'get it' in his response to the crisis of abuse. But recent events have raised doubts.

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  • PODCAST

    Francis Sullivan on the Royal Commission aftermath

    • Podcast
    • 24 January 2018
    3 Comments

    The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has concluded. What lies ahead now for the Catholic Church? Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, talks about what the process has been like, and the unease among ordinary Catholics that church leaders still don't get it.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2017: Bishop Long at the Royal Commission

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 January 2018
    7 Comments

    Vincent Long's testimony was notable for its directness, honesty and the awareness it displayed of the importance of church culture. Long grew up in the Vietnamese Catholic Church and was afterwards chosen to lead the Australian Church. In his responses he focused on clericalism and its role in giving license and cover to clerical abuse.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2017: Commission's Catholic wrap-up

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 January 2018
    13 Comments

    The statistics were horrifying. Every case represented a person who claims as a child to have been abused by a person of authority in a Catholic institution. Whichever way the statistics are interpreted in comparison with other institutions, they are appalling. We need to hold the victims clearly in focus.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2017: The abuse commission 'damp squib'

    • Moira Rayner
    • 08 January 2018
    2 Comments

    This royal commission has changed the public response of religious institutions, not their culture. Nor has it altered the culture at the political pointy ends of state, territory or national government. The cause of the misuse of power over children was our refusal to take a child's world view as seriously as our own adult priorities.

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  • RELIGION

    Lay lead the way in child abuse lament

    • Helena Kadmos
    • 19 December 2017
    24 Comments

    A small group of lay Christians in Perth, including myself, were so worried that our institutions might not wholeheartedly embrace the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse that we decided not to wait to find out.

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  • RELIGION

    Seal of confession should remain inviolate

    • Bill Uren
    • 07 December 2017
    34 Comments

    I suspect the royal commission will recommend the seal of confession should no longer remain absolute. I also know that all priests of my acquaintance will rather go to jail than violate the seal. I cannot then see that such a move will be anything but unproductive. Perpetrators will be less likely to go to confession and priests will go to jail.

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  • RELIGION

    Will abuse commission be another damp squib?

    • Moira Rayner
    • 07 December 2017
    40 Comments

    This royal commission has changed the public response of religious institutions, not their culture. Nor has it altered the culture at the political pointy ends of state, territory or national government. The cause of the misuse of power over children was our refusal to take a child's world view as seriously as our own adult priorities.

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  • RELIGION

    Vatican II, the sexual revolution and clergy sexual misconduct

    • Stephen de Weger
    • 07 June 2017
    69 Comments

    The sexual revolution and Vatican II was a release from 'parental control' resulting, for many, in the sudden emergence of full-blown psychological adolescence with its risk taking, experimentation and lack of a fully developed sense of responsibility. Many clergy either slid into adolescent liberalism or, collapsing under new adult demands of freedom, retreated into reactionary conservatism. Others grew up and moved on, into new ways of being 'celibate'. Clergy misconduct is found in all three groups.

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